I quit reviewing movies here on the blog when I started selling stuff to Hollywood. The last thing I wanted to do was insult somebody that could potentially give me money for a book. However, I’ve just got to comment on Prometheus.

I really wanted to love this movie. I really did. It is gorgeous. This is one of the best looking movies ever. The acting from the main characters is remarkable. Michael Fassbender turns in an amazing performance. Idris Elba can do no wrong. Charlize Theron was great (especially the way she emoted in the flamethrower scene)… Noomi Rapace did a great job. The cast was awesome.

But despite all that good, Prometheus made my head hurt. I’ve heard some people try to say that it is a “thinking” movie for “grown ups”… No. And quit being a pretentious wannabe English professor. The problem with Prometheus being a Thinking movie is that the more you think about it, the less it makes sense. The more I think about it, the more things I have a hard time with. (you’ll notice that you never hear anybody complaining about the plot holes of the Avengers, because it didn’t try to be a Thinking movie. It just says shut up and enjoy your awesome).

Instead Prometheus was written in such a way that it required the cast of supposedly intelligent characters to make decisions like unto the cast of a low budget B horror movie. It was one step above “hey, we’re in the haunted murder mansion with a serial killer, let’s split up and wander around in the dark!” “Great idea. Let’s have sex and smoke pot so the slasher can murder us faster while we’re distracted!” I expect that kind of cheap cop-out writing from movies that cost $100 and the actors were paid in beer, not $200,000,000 gorgeous movies starring a bunch of great actors.

SPOILER ALERT! Seriously, this is spoilerific. Stop reading now if you don’t want spoilers.

I warned you…

Captain’s log. Star date, Dec 23, 2089. This is Idris Elba, Captain of the Prometheus. We are on a mission to the faraway planet LV-223 because a couple of archeologists read Chariot of the Gods. Apparently with the bazillions of stars you can see from earth from different hemispheres and across thousands of years this was the only place in all of outer space that five dots lined up just right, and I’m not going to think too hard about that any more. Charlize Theron is our requisite corporate ice bitch and we’ve even got an android. There’s a bunch of other crew, but I’ve got a sneaky feeling that none of us are going to bother to learn their names.

I’m currently in hypersleep while our android is demonstrating that if this was a better movie he would totally win an Oscar.

Dec 24. We all got decanted from hyper sleep. Charlize did pushups to demonstrate her corporate hard-ass-itude and the archeologist with the dragon tattoo barfed a lot. The crew got to know each other so the audience could easily determine who was going to die first. I think the Weyland Corporation must not give a crap about this mission since they hired Insane Clown Posse to be our science team. (Rainbows! What do they mean?)

After a briefing where everyone was needlessly cruel to our android, we discussed our plans to find the Engineers that made mankind by melting themselves into our oceans. Our Fassbenderbot learned the Engineer’s language by mooshing all of Earth’s languages together… Okay… Since there was a beautifully shot opening bit where a totally ripped big white dude melted into DNA and fell in the ocean, then logically that means those single celled organisms would totally speak the same language and then pass that down to us today. Insane Clown Posse doesn’t seem convinced. Hey, whatever. I’m just a spaceship captain. It isn’t like I know “science”.

On that thought… If the big white buffed guy melted into DNA, and then that DNA evolved for the next 300 million years, from bugs to fish to dinosaurs to chimps and whatnot, I’m assuming that our DNA would no longer match the Engineer’s right? Oh, wait… I’m getting ahead of myself.

In one of the rare displays of logic thus far, Charlize warned the archeologists not to make contact with the Engineers… So of course they got all butt hurt about it. Because you know, it is only the most important thing ever in all history, so why shouldn’t we just rush into it and screw up our first meeting with a hyper-advanced alien species? It isn’t like they’re going to get pissed off and drop mutagenic goo on Earth or something.

Dec 25. After all of the other characters have been total dicks to Fassbender the Robot (really, I wouldn’t blame him if he decided to murder all of humanity, because we really are being pricks) we found a road and a big alien ruin. So, since this was the biggest and most important sciency type discovery ever, we approached carefully and probed—HA! Just messing with you. We said f*&k it and swooped right in there and started poking that shit. We learned our archeology from the University of Indiana Jones.

So while our science team went in and started dicking around, Charlie the archeologist decided that the air was good to breath inside the ruin, so he took his helmet off… Never mind potential viruses and bacteria, or hell, maybe the aliens really liked to decorate with asbestos. Are you freaking kidding me? You’re in a space alien ruin and the first thing you do is take your helmet off? Are you smoking crack? Man, public education in the 2080s is completely useless.

They found a door and a headless alien dude that totally terrified the Insane Clown Posse so much that they ran away like little girls, they then promptly got lost, (even though one of them was the guy in charge of mapping the place) and since I run a pretty loose operation we sorta forgot about them…

Meanwhile the Fassbendroid poked some things and opened the door. Personally I think I would’ve told the robot to quit freaking poking mysterious alien buttons and opening murder doors in the mysterious ruin, but hey, whatever. Science. The room was filled with all sorts of mysterious stuff, that didn’t really make sense, but was arranged to feel vaguely like the egg chamber in the first Alien movie. “Hey, this looks organic! Cool! Let’s poke at it!” Geniuses. But then they all had to bail before a big super storm, that we probably should’ve noted before it was only a mile away. What am I paying all of you people for?

We scanned the alien head. The scanner said it was “pathogen free” but then it came alive, swelled up with black goo, and exploded. Yeah… Note to self. Get that scanner calibrated. Oh, and that thing about our DNA being a match… Uh huh… We share something like 60% of our DNA with a banana, but I’m not buying that.

I think the robot may have slipped Charlie some mysterious alien goo, but then again, Charlie has been such an out of character whiney little bitch that who can blame him… This does however raise the question of how Fassbender knew what the goo would do. Really, since his entire knowledge of this species is looking at cave paintings of dots and smooshing words together, so how the hell… Oh, never mind…

So then Charlie whined to Noomi the archeologist. Here, let me condense this whole scene for you guys. “I’m really bummed and depressed, because even though we just made the biggest discovery ever in history, and my entire life’s work has been justified, and we found a dead alien that is only a couple thousand years old, which means their race is probably still alive, I’m going to be all mopey because I didn’t get to talk to one THIS MINUTE because they created life.” “I can’t create life, which came totally out of nowhere. Now I am sad too.” (hmmm… I suddenly have a premonition that Noomi is going to be pregnant with an alien in no time). “I am sad too. Let’s have sex.” “Cool.”

Meanwhile, back on the bridge. I was just chilling and playing with my accordion (no a real accordion, get your mind out of the gutter) and teasing the Insane Clown Posse that was trapped and alone in the terrifying alien death ruin. “Hey, look a life form… Aw, just screwing with you guys.” But then I abandoned them because Charlize Theron wanted to get freaky with me… Oh, come on. Don’t judge me. You know you’d do the same thing. (hmmm… Come to think of it, maybe I should have warned the ICP about the exploding alien head that was filled with black goo that they should avoid black goo… Nah… What’s the worst that could happen?)

MEANWHILE: “Hey, since we got lost in these ruins because we got all terrified of one specific room, let’s go back and camp in that very same room!” “That’s a great idea. Plus, there are leaking jars of suspicious organic ooze. This is the perfect place to hang out. “Hey, look. An alien worm monster swimming in the organic black goo! Let’s pet it!” “Pet it? Did they teach you that at your fancy biologist school?” “Hey, cutie. Come to papa. Ooh, look, now it has spread open a cobra hood and is hissing angrily at me. Everybody knows that nature’s universal code for let’s hug. Come to daddy, come here pretty, come—AAAAAARRRRGGGHHHH! MY ARM! OH GOD! NOOOO! SNAP CRACK POP KILL IT! ACID!!! AAAArrglbrglgrlbl….”

Dec 26. Captain’s log. Yeah… about that last entry about the worst that could happen? Remind me to delete all that incriminating stuff.

The android went off by himself, but we’re all cool with that. It isn’t like he keeps on pushing random buttons and screwing with stuff or anything, so we totally trust the soulless abomination. We went back to the ruins and Charlie started getting all mutagenic on us. Charlize burned him to death with a flamethrower, which made everybody else sad, but was probably the smartest thing anybody on this whole expedition has done. I’m thinking Charlize might be the smartest person on board.

Then Noomi was suddenly 3 months pregnant with an alien that she picked up from mutagenic Charlie, and the now sinister Fassbendroid was going to freeze her (later. He’ll get around to it later). However, due to her archeologist-fu, she was able to fight her way to the really expensive medical thingy, got a C-section, and then walked it off… Yes… You read that right.

I remember reading an ancient Larry Correia novel in one of my Advanced Literary Important Literature of the 2000s class, and there being a negative review about how “terribly unrealistic” it was for a character to walk off road rash after an accident, even though the author had done it himself in real life… Meanwhile, Noomi got lasered open, had a giant combative squid removed, got 25 staples, and was able to run through the rest of the movie convincingly as long as she grimaced once in awhile.

You know… Since now a bunch of us know about the alien squid monster that was removed from Noomi, and that is still sitting in the medical room maybe we should go check on it or something? Hell, that’s even in Charlize’s cabin. Surely, the ruthless corporate ice queen would go check to make sure it is dead. I mean, if we leave it alone it may grow into an 800 pound Cthuloid face-raping octopus monster or something… Naw… We’ll get around to it later.*

*- Note Idris Elba graduated last in his class at the Space Captain program from University of Phoenix.

However, we were distracted because ICP’s helmet suddenly showed up at our doorstep… Which makes me think, since we’ve got these helmets that read our heart beats, shouldn’t we have hooked those up to an alarm or something when we abandoned half our science team? You know, that’s a good idea… I should look into downloading that as an app for my iPhone or something.

Oh yeah, back to ICP. So the ramp comes down, and one of my team of brain surgeons sees the totally messed up body of our geologist all contorted into some very suspicious mutagenic crab walk, and what does he do? No… He doesn’t immediately burn it to ash… He turns his back on the death mutant, turns around and says to his buddy “Check this out!” So then the Zombie soccer hooligan murdered half my idiot crew. It probably didn’t help that we crossed the entire universe to meet an unknown species armed with nothing but pistols, a pump shotgun, and anemic flamethrowers that would barely pass as a weed burner in 2012.

Wow… I just realized this Captain’s log is over 2,000 words and I still haven’t gotten to all of the things that didn’t make sense in the third act. So I’ll try to hurry it up.

So Weyland is secretly on the ship. His plan is to meet the Engineers so they’ll give him eternal life and I’m really unclear how he jumped to that conclusion. Charlize telegraphs that he is her FATHER, which is really kind of pointless now and felt needlessly tacked on. So then Fassbender and the gang go down to meet the last Engineer that is in cryo, who then wakes up and kicks the crap out of everybody. I’m assuming when Fassbender said “Ergchook mahoopookalooka mim hoofaloop” which translated roughly to “We’re from Earth and we’ve come to ravish your porcupines.” Then the Engineer took off to mutagenicize Earth.

So at that point I decided, hey, I’m Idris Elba. I’m Luther. I’m mother f’ing Heimdall! Nobody messes with me! So I wrecked that Engineer’s stupid face. Since I exploded, it is probably hard to explain how I can finish the last few scenes of this movie in the format of this captain’s log, but that makes about as much sense as the rest of the plot, so bear with me.

Remember earlier when I said Charlize was the smartest person on the ship? Yeah… About that. Never mind. Or maybe she just suffered from really poor depth perception and spatial awareness. Noomi gets to the life boat (hey, did I ever send anybody down to check on the space squid baby? Crap. Forgot). So then the head of Fassbender warns Noomi that the Engineer is coming for her… Which doesn’t explain how Fassbender knew that, nor how the Engineer knew where Noomi was. Then Noomi gets out a wicked Klingon battle ax that is remarkably bad ass looking to just be a fire ax (on a space ship), but then she doesn’t use it because her baby octopus shows up.

And somehow the baby space octopus is now the size of a Ford Focus… Okay… Magic. Whatever. It then face rapes the Engineer to death. So Noomi escapes with Fassbender’s head. “Hey, Noomi. I have an idea. There are other alien ships filled with death mutagen. Let’s totally fly one to Earth!” but Noomi has a spark of brilliance and says “Maybe not totally untrustworthy robot that has tried to murder everybody, let’s fly one of these death machines to the Engineers homeworld to talk to them and find out why they are such douchebags….” Because I’m sure the super advanced Engineers will look kindly on that and totally won’t decide to utterly eradicate humanity as a result.

Oh, but you’re saying, Captain Elba, but the Engineers already were going to eradicate humanity? How do you know that? Maybe this one big white guy in cryo was just a real surly self-righteous prick that none of the other Engineers liked? For all we know our first contact was with the Engineer equivalent of Alec Baldwin. And then Fassbender had to go and threaten to ravish his porcupines, what did you think would happen?

Larry, this isn’t a movie review, it’s a PSA. am seriously tempted to send you a check for $25 dollars. The first $16 for your movie review -which I am convinced is more intellectually stimulating and comprehensible than the move (although the visuals leave something to be desired) , and an additional $10 in gratitude for sparing me the anger and frustration I’m sure I would have experienced had I seen the movie. OR I’ll just order a bunch of MHI patches and the E-ARC for MH Legion. Either way, it’s money in your pocket. Your spoiler alert was my salvation. Now I can use my free time to go see “Brave” and “Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter” (I really enjoyed the book and, although I expect to be disappointed by the movie, I have to see it).

I’m still going to see it on Saturday in IMAX 3D. Never seeing Avatar, I feel like I have a spare “visually stunning movie shut up about the plot” slot to fill. I should be able to mentally avoid the worst of it now. Thanks Larry!

“Stranger Than Fiction” was actually rather good. But one must remember that it’s not a comedy and he actually attempts acting rather than simply smiling, acting oddly, and doing a metric crapload of random idiocy in a futile attempt to be funny.

If you’ve ever watched the reality show “whale wars” a lot of the stupid stuff the crew does in Prometheus seems perfectly realistic. Privately funded expeditions crewed by idealists that may be experts in their specific fields but dumb as rocks when it comes to practical application. Weyland was rich as hell and dying and possibly senile/insane. The crew of the Prometheus was about as professional as the crew of Sea Shepherd.

Are you saying , it’s kind of like the SyFY channel’s Special Monster movies, such as “Jersey Shore Shark Attack” or “Flying Crappie Lizard Fish from the Blue Lagoon” ?
Well, at least SyFy is kind of free.
Went to the same school as one of those save the whales numbskulls, the guy was a freaking bully in high school.

Great review Larry. One of my favorite parts of John Ringo science fiction is his realistic first contact scenes. IE, BAMFs with all kinds of military hardware clear the area before the science team even leaves the ship.

So Ridley Scott spends zillions to…make a grade-B horror movie. Which I guess he did with the original “Alien”…but that movie had a certain style that, from the sound of it, “Prometheus” lacks. Maybe because Ridley wasn’t going all artsy/pretentious on us with the original, and was just trying to scare us rather than make us “think.”

Yeah, I think I’ll wait for this one to come out on video, and keep Larry’s review handy to use as a reference while watching it.

A fine review, and since I did pay to see this flick, it’s a review I almost completely agree with. I didn’t care much for Charlize Theron’s performance, because I think she was better in another good-looking-movie-with-a-horrible-script, Snow White & The Huntsman. Why are there so many movies like that? Why is Hollywood letting the Lost Damon Lindelof anywhere near a script? Does Prometheus mean there is no hope for the planned Blade Runner movie? And what about Noomi…?

Let me say that, from this day on, I will not ever again, say to myself, This movie can’t be that bad. I went, and believe me, our host was exceedingly kind. What a piece of pretentious swill.I want that time baack.

Late to the party, but LOVED this review. Really helped me understand why I didn’t like the movie…beyond “this is the stupidest biologist ever”. Think my head hurt too much to figure it out. This read like a great RiffTrax. Thanks very much, I’ll be a follower from now on!

[…] Prometheus share my total incredulity at just how shit a film it is. Seriously, lots of people are quite rightly ranting about just how awful it is.However, there are a lot of people out there who enjoyed […]

Another problem I found was the star map. It was left as far back as 35,000 years ago, if i remember correctly. So 35,000 years ago they wanted humans to find them, to eventually meet their makers.

Yet the conclusion of the genius crew after following the map is that the planet from the map is a military outpost designed as a base to…destroy earth around 2,000 years ago.

If it’s a map to meet human’s makers as far back as 35,000 years, then the plant’s not a military base. If the planet IS a military base, they wouldn’t leave a map to 35,000 years ago if only 2,000 years ago they decided to destroy humans…sigh.

Brilliant review! The only thing I could think after seeing the movie was a mix of “meh” and @i thought this was supposed to be good…what am I missing?”. This review sums up why its such a disappointing film.

Oh Ridley, another rape metaphor? Kudos to you Mr. Correia. That was one hilarious well written review. I’m sorry you aren’t regularly reviewing movies, but given your um, incisiveness that may be a wise choice. Now I am off to check out the books you have written. Thanks for the laugh.

While some of this is funny, much of it is lazy film watching. Is Prometheus perfect? No. But as an example – you poke at the ‘Aliens have our DNA, how does that connect to them sharing a language’. Were you just being obtuse or did you fail to notice the other portions of the film where the repeatedly mention the aliens returned to earth and influenced cultures all over the planet? For a counter review, I suggest my behemoth of a review: http://agoodsteak.blogspot.com/2012/06/prometheus-review-spoiler-alert.html

Well you do have quite a few valid points. However, just to point out few things that you just went a bit too far:

1. In Alien (the first movie) they did not have proper weapons either since it was exploratory mission.

2. When talking about “petting the cobra”, they had dumb moments in Aliens, like when they wait for the attack and they get inside of the room, instead of running they try to peek in the vent. Also on this note, raise your hand anyone who wants to punch Gorman in the face when he doesn’t pull his team out.

3. The worms that came in contact with the goo grew up to snake size, why would you expect the “squid” not to do the same?

I could go on an on but if you expect logical and scientifically explainable and science-proof things you should stop watching sci-fi genre entirely. Just to make one point, my friend of mine said after watching the newest Star Trek movie: you can’t see a black hole.

Well you can’t but neither can you hear sounds in space so you would get a 90min silent movie (or whatever is the share in min for the space fights).

I agree it’s not the best and I expected more but you just get a bit too much a**l

1. The ship in Alien hadn’t traveled acrossed the entire galaxy to go try and meet an unknown alien species, that could be dangerous. I have more/better guns in my basement than they had on the Prometheus.

2. I was reviewing Prometheus. Not the prior movies. No matter how you cut it, that was freaking stupid writing.

3. Uhh… Physics?

Seriously… How did the baby squid gain 2000 pounds in a few hours? Did Vickers keep a ton of Butterfingers stashed in the medical room? If I have matter grow out of nowhere in a fantasy novel I can say it is from magic. This is supposed to be sci-fi, so not having some sort of hand-wavium about that is bad writing. Screw the laws of thermodynamics, I do what I want!!!!

4. I didn’t review Star Trek either.

5. Firefly had quiet space flight scenes. And as we all know, everything is better when it is Firefly.

6. So to paraphrase, if I want science in my science fiction, I shouldn’t watch science fiction…

Or maybe Hollywood should hire an editor for its shitty screen plays, because my editor would’ve smacked me over the head for turning in something with plotholes that ridiculous, and I write FANTASY.

My point was only that if you go into too much detail to analyse any movie then you can find a lot of mistakes and illogical things. The physics you are mentioning applies both to the squid and the worms and when you compare the size they grow to it might be actually the same in terms of relative ratio. This problem of fast growth you encounter in the previous Alien movies. The “baby” Alien bursts out of the ribcage, goes to ventilation system and grows up to a 2 metre high creature in no time. What is the explanation for that? You can either (i) say that there must have been heaps of rats in their vent system (or he does photosynthesis) or (ii) just accept it as a fact and enjoy the movie.

I’m not saying it was a good movie, I was also disappointed and I was expecting a lot more considering the previous movies, or at least Alien and Aliens (the last two parts are hardly worth mentioning).

The big problem that he (Ridley Scott) had is that you loose the element of surprise because most of the things are already known and you can’t match the lunch scene when suddenly the alien bursts out of Kane’s ribcage after everyone thought he’s fine. Most of other possibilities were depleted in the following movies.

As it is with most cult movies and their fan base, it is very difficult (or almost impossible) to pull it off and get a prequel(s) that would match up and be worthy of the original movie.

Anyway, most of Holywood directors/writers do get away with crappy screenplays and movies which is a bit sad. So you should consider yourself lucky if your editors smack you over your head all the time.

Talking about fantasy, there is at least The Hobbit to look forward to towards the end of the year. Also it would be really good if someone can adapt The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant for a screenplay, although it would be extremely hard considering the inner monologues and thoughts that can’t be translated to the screen.

Fantastic Review-Spot On!. Saw the movie enjoyed it — but it made Independence Day look intellegent in comparison. If only they could have hooked up an Apple laptop to input a viris to stop the engineers. Maybe in the sequel.

Excellent review! It stated all of the problems I had with the movie but made it much funnier.
One thing I still haven’t managed to understand yet is why did the movie take place so friggin’ long after the TED talk trailer? Weyland mentions Prometheus in it like he already is in the process of constructing it, actually he talks about it like it is ready to launch. Why did it take him 60 years to launch it? Even if this wasn’t the first ship like it why is it still called Prometheus? Maybe that’s bit nit-picky but I still don’t get it…

Went to see it yesterday… First reaction to movie was that it was good. Then at dinner, the family started to poke holes in the plot story. There were a lot of holes! Thanks for the blog. It was funny!

The film really was complete and total shit, and I say that as someone who was looking forward to seeing it. And don’t believe anyone who says, ‘Yeah it was a shit story, but it looks really good and there’s some great acting!’ Bullfuck. Never mind the bullshit story. It’s even boring visually (you’ve seen it all before) and the acting is crap too. Fassbender? He just does a standard ‘cold English butler’ routine. The sort of thing every aspiring actor on earth could do before they invented method acting. The sort of thing that was all over the place in the days when butlers were real and two a penny. ‘Yes, sir. Very good, sir. Another gin and tonic, sir?’ It’s *that* level of acting talent. Jeeves, if he had a square jaw and better hair, and was perhaps a bit unbalanced.

It was total and utter shit. It’s the worst film I’ve ever, ever, ever seen. And I’m including crap like Keifer Sutherland’s ‘Windows’ in that. Yes, Prometheus is *worse* than some nearly-straight-to-video-standard Keifer Sutherland vehicle. Worse. I can’t believe it.

The film was a genuine crime against cinema, perhaps the only one ever. There are no words to say how shit it really was.

[…] behaved in a coherent fashion. Prometheus was so bad…I just…you know what? Just read Larry Correia’s review (you might have to right click and open in new tab). Larry says all the stuff I’d like to say […]